Social Media Insights for the Travel and Tourism Industry

Social Media Insights for the Travel and Tourism Industry

Travel is a pretty big deal to the world economy ($7 Trillion USD) and to our employees at Infegy. In fact, every one of our employees gets two complimentary international plane tickets to anywhere in the world once per year.

Because travel is always on our minds, we decided to dig deeper into forums, Facebook, and Twitter to uncover the consumer motivations and behaviors related to travel and tourism.

The result is a social media report that details current trends in travel, outlook for the 2014 holiday travel season, why people are traveling, how they’re getting there, where they’re staying, and what they use to plan and book their trips.

In this post we’ll briefly touch on a few of the findings from the report. For the in-depth analysis be sure to grab the full PDF. Travel and Tourism Report

2014 has been a great year for travel

Hotel industry revenue is up 7%, airline industry revenue is up 2%, there has been a 9% year-over-year increase in travel discussions online, and a 22% increase in mentions related to spending money on travel.

Ebola won’t stop travelers

While there was initial concern that public fears related to ebola would put a damper on air travel, fears related to ebola and flying have since dissipated.

The 2014 trends in travel

Millennials were at the center of two significant travel trends this year, destination weddings and travel related bucket lists. Bucket lists were a general trend for people of all ages discussing travel, making up 2% of all mentions, but it was millennials and Generation Z in particular that discussed this the most.

There was a huge spike in destination wedding conversations this year, and once again, millennials represented that majority of posters for this topic.

People travel for themselves first, friends and family second

The majority of consumers report traveling as a means of getting away, taking a break, or relaxing. However, there are a few exceptions where family takes precedence, including Independence Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving.

44% travel for friends or family, only 10% stay with them

Although motivations related to family accounted for 30% of travel, the majority of consumers reported staying in hotels rather than with relatives. Men are more likely on average to be attracted to staying at hotels rather than staying with friends or family. In fact, when it comes to staying with friends, feedback from men is 45% more negative than feedback from women.

Conclusion

Of all the discoveries, we found it particularly interesting was that Generation Z was so engaged with discussing bucket lists.